Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Setting of a Story

Every year, one of the first things I teach is setting of a story. I ALWAYS think to myself that it will be a breeze, and I can kind of fly through it. THEN good ole' January rolls around and when I ask my kiddos what the setting of a story is, I usually get...CRICKET CHIRP...aka nothing. Maybe a few will remember, but not enough to satisfy me! So this past year I decided to look up more activities for setting to help kids remember. I ran into some really cute things here and there, but it was hard to find a bunch of activities for setting! Everything had setting combined with story elements, which is definitely understandable, but not what I was looking for. SO I decided to sit down and come up with my own activities for teaching setting. It seriously has taken me 3 weeks or so to finish this because I added activities to the packet as they came to me! I ended up with 6 activities/worksheets. Here is a preview of what I came up with:

There are about 8 different pages of these. Students must look at the pictures and decide where and when the scene is taking place. They also have to tell what clues led them to their decision!

This is an activity where students are given one of these cards, and they have to write clues about the picture. They will read the clues to the class, and everyone has to guess their setting! There are about 20 different cards.

This is the sample page I included in the packet. I chose to use this page so you could get a better idea of what I was talking about, but the blank one is included in the packet! Students will come up with a setting, draw a picture, and write a short paragraph about their picture (without revealing the setting). The boxes will be cut out, mixed up, and everyone will have to match the correct boxes back up.

Several different characters are given, and students write a story about that character and create a setting for them!

Brochures about 4 different settings for students to create!

Students will take the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and change the story. They will create a new setting for the story, which will probably force them to change the characters, scenes, etc. (you can't have bears at a beach!)

I hope these ideas are helpful, and if you would like to purchase this packet, you can do so HERE!